


look at me

by xervos



Category: The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, hector just wants to be loved dammit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22042318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xervos/pseuds/xervos
Summary: Alexander takes in a young Hector Bowen.a childhood spent with turned backs, envy, arrogance, and miscommunication
Relationships: Hector Bowen & Alexander H-
Kudos: 3





	1. a meeting

Hector Bowen was two years old when a stranger wearing a grey suit came knocking on his parents’ doorstep. His nursemaid was watching him in the nursery at the time, frantically trying to snatch bottles and blankets out of the air, all the while cursing "Devil's child!" under her breath. Hector was laughing, and pointed to the door. Only his bear followed, but before it could fly out the door, someone materialises in the doorway, the bear hitting his chest once before the stranger catches it.

The grey stranger looks at Hector Bowen quietly, stuffed bear in hand.

Hector gazes back.

The nursemaid does not move.

“Stop that,” the grey man finally says. The toys, blankets, bottles, and other baby things simply fall with a muffled clatter as they rearrange themselves into neatness. Hector frowns, not understanding why his fun stopped and he doesn’t feel the way that everything should. He opens and closes his small hand, but he doesn’t feel the pull or push that he normally feels. It’s strange and foreign and empty.

He opens his mouth to cry, but in the next moment, the nursemaid is carrying him, shushing him.

The grey man walks into another room, and speaks with Mrs. Bowen. It goes on for quite some time, and he leaves when she screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering Hector has a "Bowen family motto" and rings and this sort of old money vibe I don't think Alexander picked him up from just anywhere.


	2. another time

The next time the grey man visits, Hector Bowen is four.

The pull to manipulate things has grown, and he is constantly making things float and fly. His mother has enlisted priests that performed not less than three exorcisms on him, but nothing has changed. A year after the grey strangers’ visit, she storms out of the house in shame and a fit of anger and has never looked back.

Mr. Bowen takes it quietly. He tries to ignore his son’s oddness. He keeps his son fed, brings him to work when he can, but usually just leaves Hector at home asleep and hopes he doesn’t destroy the house. The nursemaid was asked to stay, but she too leaves after Hector managed to conjure a fire in his hands and set her dress alight.

Hector takes it as much as a young child would, and cries loudly for the nanny that will never return.

The grey stranger walks up to the modest stone house once again and sees Hector in the garden, alone among the weeds.

“Where is your mother?” he asked. The child shakes his head.  “Your father?”

“Work,” the child replies. He looks up at the stranger, arms crossed, eyes confused. “Pa’ is… working. He said he’ll be back by sundown.”

The grey man considers this, and the state of the child. Dirty clothes, soiled pants, sitting among fallen leaves by an empty house that has likely been abandoned. The child has only gotten more confused with each passing year, and cannot control the keys he’d been born with.

He will not be the first student the grey man had taken in, nor will he be the last, but he will be the first in a long time.

The grey man extends a hand. “Do you want to come with me?” 

The grey man is tall and strange. He is different and dark and very old. He will not be able to pick up Hector when he cries, nor will he run around in meadows with the boy. Hector looks at this man’s strange grey eyes, his outstretched hand covered with an immaculate white glove. He listened to this man’s deep voice, deeper than the pond and the bright blue sky.

This will be the last time the grey man will see Hector Bowen, should he refuse.

So Hector nods and takes his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do you write a child.


	3. a new home

Alexander watches as his newest pupil rips apart books and looks for broken things around the house. He is not unnerved by this development, though he does wish that Hector wouldn’t have destroyed the original manuscripts, even could repair it with ease more gracefully than a book doctor.

One by one, the books float into the air, Hector Bowen in the middle of it all, eyes bright and shining. Torn shreds sew itself back together with remarkable precision, broken shards becoming whole without so much of a mark. There was nothing special about this whole sequence; no sparkles, no lights, no flourish, no anything. Alexander remains unmoved, but watches with something not quite unfamiliar, but not pleasant either.

After a few minutes, everything is put back together and Hector laughs in delight at his accomplishment. He turns to look at the study, where Alexander stood, a question in his eyes.

_ Did you see it? _

Alexander turns away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! And with that comes a new song I'm obsessed with: Into the Unknown, P!atD ver. Of course I have not seen the movie.


	4. siblings

Hector is tired.

Alexander takes in a new child, and Hector watches it unfold through a hole in the office wall. The study remained unchanged for several years except for the arrangement of chairs, as Hector preferred it when he was facing Alexander’s work desk. Several of his notebooks, filled to the brim with various spells, sat on the table that usually holds Alexander’s tea.

The child is simple. Little. Ordinary. Picked from the streets or orphanage, or perhaps a family with ends struggling to meet. It doesn’t matter—if Alexander sees potential, then he grooms them as he sees fit.

Hector doesn’t care about his mentor’s altruistic tendencies and instead glares at the four-year-old. She’s the fourth he’s brought in after Hector. She has no magical talent, but Alexander had given her a key earlier in the week, as he does with all his students.

But Hector is special. He already had the keys when he was born. He was a natural at it. Even better than those who visit his mentor from time to time. He can use spells without writing, has better control than his previous siblings, older or younger.

He’s brought back to reality when he hears Alexander speak.

“Do you want to come with me?”

They were all given a choice, once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short as it may be, i promise that this was already done but i wasn't satisfied.
> 
> i've been having writer's block. writer's frustration. whichever, i suppose?
> 
> Stuff Happened, and I'm Mostly Over It

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why Alexander is my favourite character. He just is and I love his relationships with his students.


End file.
